Gleba Petapod Perimeter Defense?

[schorsch_76]

Hi,

How to build a proper perimeter defense against the pentapods and their speedy friends? Only viable option: Rocketturrets? Its locked behind gleba science. Whats the best option before they are available?

Just for reference about their might:
YT: Factorio and why you should respect the pentapods

[Daid]

Initially, I build a wall with piecing ammo turrets behind it, one turret every 4 tiles. That can keep the small ones reasonably at bay. They will however, take out parts of the line from time to time.

I upgraded to a full line of laser turrets behind that. Those laser turrets did wonders. Small ones no longer stood a chance. Did have to import a 1000 from Fulgora, as I don't see how I could have produced enough of these in time on Gleba. I am producing them now on Gleba, but that's mainly to restore the destroyed ones. Yes, you will keep losing parts of the defense, you need a robot network to repair and rebuild things. Yes the enemies have pretty decent resistances against them. But, they are easy to maintain, as power isn't a huge issue on Gleba. You do need to ensure that taking out a single powerpole won't cripple your laser defenses.
Compared to gunturrets, they also have more range, so more will attack, and will take out the small enemies before the gunturrets will even react, concentrating the fire of the gunturrets on the bigger guys.


But, as evolution keeps going, I'm now facing medium stompers, and those... stomp. So I now have rocket turrets behind the lasers every 12 tiles. But with a laser turret defense you should have ample of time to research those. So far they haven't made much of a dent into that defense yet.


While they only target your harvesting area, they do walk through everything else to get there. So I just surrounded my whole base with this turret line.

(note that the video shows the biggest stompers)

[schorsch_76]

Still a little anxious to turn the breeding on ....

[jdrexler75]

I'm considering just defending my harvest areas as far as the spores reach. So that no new nests settle there to get spore crazy, and I only need to take out the nest settlement groups instead of actual attacks. They won't settle too close to the production hub and in any case don't care about it.

Does this have a chance of working, or is it a stupid idea that I will regret?

[HadesSupreme]

Turret-wise you really need either the Tesla turrets from Fulgora (best option) or missile turrets to defend against stompers. If you are stuck long enough on Gleba trying to figure out production and stompers come before you get missile turrets then... RIP.

[territrades]

Build a tank and take out all the nests in the spore cloud. That is way more effective than trying to build a traditional wall around your base using gun and laser turrets.

[jdrexler75]

Build a tank and take out all the nests in the spore cloud. That is way more effective than trying to build a traditional wall around your base using gun and laser turrets.

That's what I did, but of course they will soon try to build new nests there. So you need to stop the expansion parties, or eradicate the nests they make (which accelerates evolution). Hence trying to fortify around the spore cloud to stop that, still wondering if it will work properly.

The advantage is, I'm thinking, that expansion parties always have a relatively similar group size whereas spore attacks can get very large.

[Moikle]

Build a tank and take out all the nests in the spore cloud. That is way more effective than trying to build a traditional wall around your base using gun and laser turrets.

They expand too quickly for this to work. You will be spending 100% of your time taking out new nests as they place them

[jaylawl]

After lots of struggling with Gleba for the longest time, i came to realise that tesla turrets are extremely effective in slowing down the pentapods and turn them into target practice for other turrets. I have a small Gleba base and a respective fruit harvest site each a couple hundred tiles away from it. The main base has been undefended for the whole time, as pentapods never attacked it. The harvest sites are now defended by a bunch of tesla + rocket turrets in every cardinal direction with electric weapons damage level 7 and stronger explosives level 9, which is self good enough for now at evolution factor 0.77.

Until you can place rocket turrets (which really is the damage dealer you need against the big bois), just spam gun and laser turrets. But what you really want to do in that that pre-rocket turret phase is just run around with a rocket launcher and a tesla gun and destroy the nests nearby.

[jdrexler75]

They expand too quickly for this to work. You will be spending 100% of your time taking out new nests as they place them

It helps to plop down a bunch of walls (just a dozen or so per chunk), which greatly decrease the likelihood of expansion into that chunk even if they'd be useless in an attack. After doing that I've never had an attack at all, wasted all that time building a defense... maybe if the population pressure gets too intense it may fail to deter them though.

[antecureuil]

The best way I found is very lean and resilient actually.

You need:
1) a spidertron loaded with rockets and equipped with exoskeletons for speed, plus roboport.
2) a railroad encircling the spore cloud with regular stops and an artillery train.

The train goes around, stops and shoots down young nests, which do not spawn anything most of the time.
Once in a while train will shoot a mature nest (for instance after an artillery range research), pentapods will go for revenge and will destroy… a piece of railroad (the train is already gone). In this case you send a spodertron which easily kills big pentapods (speed is key) and rebuilds the rails.

No walls, no turrets.

From time to time (once in 5-10 hours) you need to widen radius of the railroad to encircle the entire spore cloud, which has grown. On the first pass of the train follow with spidertron and destroy revenge parties. It’s fun.

Super easy, no pain.

[eugenekay]

My “wrong answer” which actually worked great: Artillery, and Uranium ammo! It takes lots of rocket launches to get the stuff from Vulcanus/Nauvis, but that’s not a Gleba problem.

I shipped in a bunch of Tungsten plates along with my normal New Planet Robotics & The-Best-Defense-is-a-Good-Offense Kit, and proceeded to lob a a welcome package towards anything Red on the map. Uncommon/Rare quality Radars and Big Electric Poles (with Laser Turrets all around) were useful for Visibility. If anything interesting popped-up, I drove a disposable tank at the problem firing shells and Uranium Ammo: no more problem.

There was a bit of a race to get Rocket Turrets researched and built - but Artillery shells fly faster than 5 legs can Walk.

I still like to symbolically build Walls on Gleba, even though they’re useless, to indicate the edge of the Turrets’ effective range. And rebuilding them gives the Robots something to do; it is boring to just farm Jellyfruit all day.

[antecureuil]

If anything interesting popped-up, I drove a disposable tank at the problem firing shells and Uranium Ammo: no more problem.

It's definitely a way to have fun
Personally I found it challenging to hit a strafer with a talk shell.
After having fun with spidertron to clean up the area, I started to look for a way to leave Gleba base behind and move on to the next challenge. So I needed to get an autonomous and lasting solution. Someone suggested to place artillery outposts around the spore cloud. I evolved it to a moving artillery train, because it's easier logistically, as it refills itself. And I do not need to defend firing spots, even if stompers come and destroy a patch of railroad, it's fast and cheap to repair.

[trancexpress]

I have a large area (larger than my spore area), covered by gun turret blocks 25 each, with red ammo (I dont have a supply chain, my blueprint lets bots load the turrets initially). I got roboports for vision and logistics. I got a few spidertrons with rockets, with those I clear nests when I have to expand the gun turret perimeter. I dont actually get attempts at expansion this way. The critters have not bothered me for months. I'm not sure why tbh, they dont try to expand like on Nauvis, or their attempts are so feeble, they barely use up turret ammo...

I do have upgrades, maybe that helps. But I've not seen damaged building notifications... I have 2 full yumiko tree plantations and one full jellynut plantation. I produce 1.5k agricultural per minute and some carbon fiber and bioflux. Rest of the stuff (rocket parts, roboports, gun turrets and ammo) I produce with materials dropped from space platforms.

[jdrexler75]

I dont have a supply chain, my blueprint lets bots load the turrets initially

Does that still work for you? I'm pretty sure a recent patch made that impossible. At least I can no longer get it to work.

[trancexpress]

I dont have a supply chain, my blueprint lets bots load the turrets initially

Does that still work for you? I'm pretty sure a recent patch made that impossible. At least I can no longer get it to work.

You mean if it works in general? I have an old blueprint that I use, no idea if I can make a blueprint like that again, I've not tried.

I do vaguely remember using an external blueprint editor to only blueprint 25 ammo instead of 100.

Or you mean if it works on Gleba? Also yes, I dont seem to be getting attacked by expansion parties. I dunno if the creatures even try to expand like on Nauvis, I'm at 0.9+ evolution but barely find new nests in the fog, when I must expand due to more harvesting. I am on default settings. I am also near the start area, dunno if that makes a difference.

[jdrexler75]

Does that still work for you? I'm pretty sure a recent patch made that impossible. At least I can no longer get it to work.

You mean if it works in general? I have an old blueprint that I use, no idea if I can make a blueprint like that again, I've not tried.

Yeah in general, for the past months I couldn't make it work, but somehow I remembered how to do it wrong. You have to prepare a ghost turret outside of a roboport area, set the ammo, and then blueprint it while the ammo isn't placed in by bots yet. If bots have filled the ammo request it will no longer appear in the blueprint. PS, I just learned you can set to fill it with less than a full stack by right-clicking which adds a single ammo each time. No need for an editor.